BRAZIL’S official position that last week’s meat scandal was just small scale opportunism with no measurable consequences in human health and that the country’s vital meat inspection and certifying systems can be relied on appears to be gaining acceptance at importing country level.
Latest reports are that China, Egypt and Chile have all lifted the temporary bans they placed on Brazilian product a little over a week ago. This is an important development as they are among the biggest importers of Brazilian beef.
It is understood that while temporary bans have been lifted, certain restrictions will remain on individual processing plants under investigation.
Brazil’s president Michel Temer was reported in the media as welcoming China’s decision as an acknowledgement of the reliability of Brazil’s meat safety systems and for his expression of confidence that other countries will follow China’s example.
More than a dozen countries are reported to have imposed temporary bans of some kind but no doubt the big one that Brazil is keen to have back on side is their largest beef market, Hong Kong.
According to South China Morning Post, Hong Kong’s Food and Environmental Hygiene Department slapped a total ban on all meat imports from Brazil last Tuesday.
The report claimed that this resulted in supermarket chain Wellcome and its rival ParknShop removing Brazilian meat and poultry items from their shelves.
End users such Fairwood and Maxim’s Group were also reported to have stopped using meat from Brazil and indicated they would be looking to substitute suppliers from other countries.
At time of writing, there was no indication of Hong Kong relaxing its ban.
At the source end of the supply chain the combined effect of the temporary bans imposed by Hong Kong, China and others caused major processor JBS SA to suspend operations in 33 of its 36 beef slaughter plants in Brazil.
According to US meat-industry site Meatingplace, the suspension applied for three days from Thursday last week followed by an expected return of all processing units at 35pc reduced capacity.
Prices on move as supply tightens
DESPITE Stuart meatworks at Townsville coming on line since Tuesday last week, kill numbers overall in Queensland dropped by 2500 to 65,760 head.
This tightening in supply comes after a six week window where processors generally had numbers coming at them fairly well but the underlying sentiment was that it was always going to be short lived.
In consequence, grid prices moved up a notch last week and a further adjustment this week has taken four-tooth ox to 520c/kg and heavy cow to 465.
One southern Queensland processor confirmed that supply was the only factor in the mix and that the much talked about developments in Brazil and the bans imposed by China and other countries are in no way implicated in these latest rises. He said while there was an elevated level of enquiry from China it had not converted into sales at this point.
Meanwhile, the focus of concern with Cyclone Debbie now looks to be shifting from Townsville to Rockhampton. The precautionary measure of standing everyone down at Stuart on Tuesday looks as though it will give way to a return to work on Wednesday at time of writing.
However with the rain that Rockhampton has already received over the last week and the expectation that remnants of Debbie will bring heavy rain to the Central Highlands and down into the Burnett, it seems likely that water will be an issue by end of week for Rockhampton processors.
Improved guidelines for condition scoring
IN the absence of coordinated national focus on the beef livestock language, it is pleasing to see that the needs of beef producers in Northern Australia are being addressed by the collaborative extension program FutureBeef.
Their latest work on body condition scoring (BCS) has just appeared in MLA’s Feedback magazine and relates to the development of a new set of standard photographs which more accurately demonstrate BCS in tropical cattle breeds.
The importance of BCS was highlighted in the seminal study into reproductive performance in northern Australian beef herds known as CashCow which was published in January 2014.
With BCS now widely regarded as a valuable tool for assessing animals and overall management planning, it was important for the photo standards to be consistent across breeds and this is what Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries researchers Jo Miller, Dave Smith and Mick Sullivan together with Geoffry Fordyce from University of Queensland have delivered.
Just as MLA was a partner in the CashCow project they are also a partner in FutureBeef so at least within the research parameters of MLA there should be some appreciation of the BCS issue.
Whether that appreciation could or should be migrated across to another important area of MLA responsibility, market reporting, is another matter.
At present, MLA reporting of store cattle utilises a fat scoring system designed 40 years ago for reporting slaughter cattle. Unfortunately and not unexpectedly the two systems do not match up.
Body condition scores 1, 2 and 3 describe cattle with essentially no fat. In the formal market-reporting fat scoring system they would accurately fall under fat score 1.
But in the recent years of devastating drought when there have been any number of BCS 1, 2 and 3 cattle going through saleyards, it has been extremely rare to see a fat score 1 animal appear in a market report. This suggests a strong element of confusion between the different systems.
As identified in this column a fortnight ago the ACCC cattle and beef market study report completely missed the issues associated with store cattle in their investigations into pricing transparency. That should not be a reason for industry to allow the livestock language to continue to drift aimlessly without some form of coordinated ownership as has occurred since 1998.
